Tyler Durden

Friday November 16, 2018

Well that escalated quickly...

Just days after taking back the House, a Democratic Congressmen has proposed outlawing "military-style semi-automatic assault weapons" and forcing existing owners to sell their weapons or face prosecution.

Swalwell proposes that the government should offer up to $1,000 for every weapon covered by a new ban, estimating that it would take $15 billion to buy back roughly 15 million weapons - and “criminally prosecute any who choose to defy [the buyback] by keeping their weapons.”read on...

Monday September 17, 2018

Another attack on Syria has occurred tonight on multiple locations in what is the largest sustained series of what are believed to be Israeli or possibly US air strikes in months. But hugely significant is that early reports suggest Russia's S-400 anti-missile missile defense system engaged the inbound rockets.

British-Syrian journalist Danny Makki, currently reporting from the ground, says the attack "lasted for a total of 1 hour 30 minutes" and missiles soared over four cities including Latakia, Tartus, Homs and Hama — with rockets and explosions lighting up the sky especially over the coastal towns.read on...

Monday February 12, 2018

With the calm of global capital markets shattered in the past two weeks, the ongoing military conflict in the Middle East has taken an understandable back seat to monetary matters. And yet, tensions involving Syria, Iran and Israel continue to escalate, most notably with this weekend's outright attack by Israel on Syria, allegedly in retaliation for an Iranian drone launch from a Syrian army base, and which led to the first downing of an Israeli F-16 jet in decades.read on...

Monday January 22, 2018

While President Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans battle to reopen the federal government, Vice President Mike Pence traveled to Israel this week to meet with dignitaries and visit a handful of historic sites - including the Holocaust Memorial.

But during a speech to the Knesset - Israel's parliament - Monday afternoon (local time) , Pence surprised his audience by declaring that the US would not re-certify the Iran deal when it comes up for renewal in May, virtually guaranteeing that the US will reimpose economic sanctions against the Iranian regime. Trump re-certified the deal earlier this month "for the last time", part of a deal with Democrats to buy them some time to work out a compromise.read on...

Thursday November 9, 2017

On September 18th, the US Senate voted to ban the use of products from the Moscow-based cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab by the federal government, citing national security risk. The vote was included as an amendment to an annual defense policy spending bill approved by the Senate on the same day and was written to bar the use of Kaspersky Lab software in government civilian and military agencies.read on...

Monday November 6, 2017

For nearly a year now we've all been inundated with 24x7 media coverage of the "Russian Collusion" narrative which suggests, among other things, that various members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russian operatives to obtain damaging information on Hillary Clinton and then used social media to spread that damaging information far and wide, thus causing Hillary's inevitable second failed bid for the White House.

That said, what if it wasn't the Trump administration, but rather the Hillary campaign and Democrats who were guilty of all the "Russian Collusion" crimes they've been screaming about for the better part of year now?

Of course, we already know that it was Hillary's campaign and the DNC that paid for the Trump dossier (see: Hillary Clinton Lied, Paid For "Trump Dossier"). We also know that most of the sources listed in the dossier were based in Russia and include a "senior Kremlin official" as well as other "close associates of Vladimir Putin."

Moreover, as CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell noted recently, it's highly likely that some portion of the funds paid to Perkins Coie by the DNC and Hillary campaign made it's way into the pockets of those "senior Kremlin officials" as compensation for their services.read on...

Thursday September 28, 2017

Last Friday the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) dropped a "bombshell" statement that sent a "thrill up the leg" (to quote Chris Matthews) of every CNN reporter across the country. The news from DHS implied that the election systems of 21 states around the country had been hacked, or at least were close to being hacked, which set off a new wave "Russian collusion" speculation in the U.S. news media (see: DHS Notifies 21 States Of Hacker Targeting; Election Officials Blame "Russian Government Cyber Actors").

That said, according to California Secretary of State Alex Padilla who released a statement this morning in response to the DHS, the whole thing was just a bunch of "fake news." Padilla noted that after requesting additional information from DHS on the "hacks" it quickly became clear that their "conclusions were wrong" and that "California's elections infrastructure and websites were not hacked or breached by Russian cyber actors.”read on...

Monday August 28, 2017

Former US Congressman Ron Paul has joined a growing list of independent political journalists and commentators who’re being economically punished by YouTube despite producing videos that routinely receive hundreds of thousands of views.read on...

Wednesday June 21, 2017

In a discussion with Edward Snowden on his “Liberty Report," Ron Paul and the former NSA contractor trace the genesis of the so-called Deep State, and discuss how the US intelligence community uses covert programs like those exposed by Snowden in 2013 to trample individual freedoms.

The most sinister quality of the Deep State, Snowden says, is its ability to mask its very existence from the public, allowing it to undermine President Donald Trump while remaining largely hidden from scrutiny.

Generally, when we’re talking about the Deep State, what we’re talking about is a mass of government that survives beyond administrations, but that is not responding to the politics of the people. This belongs not to a particular political party, but it serves across parties. Across administrations.

The Deep State’s culture of secrecy convinces employees that they won’t ever be held accountable for their actions, Snowden said, since even routine communications between employees at the CIA and NSA are classified.read on...